Share this:

Protestor Brian Sparks, right, argues with a man who is a President Donald Trump supporter, left, during the “No to Marxism in America” rally in Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park on Aug.27, 2017, in Berkeley. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)

BERKELEY — In this cradle of the free speech movement, from the very campus where the First Amendment has been tested time and again, a new poll from UC Berkeley shows California voters are split over the delicate question of whether white nationalist groups should be allowed to demonstrate.

Forty-six percent of California voters say we’ve gone too far in allowing white nationalists to demonstrate while 43 percent say the rallies should not be restricted and 11 percent had no opinion.

And Democrats, especially, appear to be grappling with the complex issue in deep blue California.

In the wake of violent protests from Charlottesville to Berkeley, more than half, a full 53 percent of California’s Democratic voters, believe we have gone too far in allowing those demonstrations. Some 50 percent of California Republicans, meanwhile, believe the right to demonstrate should not be restricted, compared with 39 percent of Democrats.

“I would have thought the liberals would be defending the right to demonstrate in general,” said Mark DiCamillo, who conducted the poll of California registered voters for the university’s Institute of Governmental Studies.

Over the past year, conservative activists have made the Berkeley campus a proving ground for free speech as some of their events have been canceled in the midst of opposition and violent protests, some led by black-clad, far-left extremists.

On Tuesday, a student group announced President Donald Trump’s ex-chief strategist Steve Bannon and former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, whose speech was canceled earlier this year, will come to the Berkeley campus at the end of the month for what they are calling “Free Speech Week.” In Fresno, the county GOP has been criticized by Democrats and the Fresno Bee editorial board for inviting former Sheriff Joe Arpaio from Maricopa County, Arizona, to speak at its annual fundraiser late this month.

“The left has always been hypocritical,” said Jan Soule, president of the Silicon Valley Association of Republican Women, who is white. “They continue to say we have free speech as long as we agree with what they say. Free speech does not extend to conservatives.”

Jewell Taylor, a Democrat from San Jose who is African-American, spent his early years in Louisiana hearing of cross-burnings on his uncle’s lawn. He says hate speech in particular leads to greater evils and should not be protected.

“Freedom of speech is good, but it all depends on what you’re speaking about,” said Taylor, who owns an auto repair shop. “I don’t like violence. I believe in making things better, and making things better is not sitting there and rallying about things that happened 100 years ago,” like slavery or white supremacy or the rise of Hitler that led to the genocide of Jews.

“Why would we want to do that to our own humanity here?” he asked.

In a letter last month, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ encouraged students to honor the university’s free speech legacy.

“Particularly now, it is critical that the Berkeley community come together once again to protect this right. It is who we are,” Christ wrote. “Call toxic speech out for what it is, don’t shout it down, for in shouting it down, you collude in the narrative that universities are not open to all speech. Respond to hate speech with more speech.”

That might take a lot of convincing, the poll found — especially at a time when the country is polarized over numerous cultural issues, as well as the Trump presidency.

Protestors grab a man for taking their picture during the “No to Marxism in America” rally in Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park on Aug. 27, 2017, in Berkeley. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)

Broken down by race and ethnicity, the only group where most believe white nationalists’ right to demonstrate shouldn’t be restricted is non-Hispanic whites — 52 percent. A majority of Asian-Americans (59 percent), African-Americans (58 percent) and Latinos (51 percent) said white nationalists have not been restricted enough.

The Berkeley poll also found that most California voters — 66 percent — believe race relations have worsened over the past year and that Trump has little ability to improve them. Only 7 percent believe race relations have improved.

Party affiliation plays a big role in opinion, however, with 81 percent of Democrats believing race relations have deteriorated, while only 41 percent of Republican believe the same thing. Nearly half of Republicans believe race relations have remained unchanged over the past year.

The greatest disparity in the poll, perhaps unsurprisingly, is over perceptions of Trump’s ability to manage racial matters, with 74 percent of Republicans having confidence in Trump’s ability, compared with only 10 percent of Democrats.

Lori Drake, the former chairwoman of the Alameda County GOP, falls in the minority of Republicans, however, believing Trump is not the right person to improve race relations.

“Even if he wanted to, he’s not properly situated to do so because he’s such a lightning rod,” Drake said. “I don’t think he’s the right guy for that. I don’t think he has the desire or the qualities to do it. The people that he champions are not all white supremacists. A lot are just people who feel disenfranchised. You need someone not connected to either side.”

The survey of 1,200 registered voters was conducted in English and Spanish between Aug. 27 and Sept. 5. It has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percent.

Julia Prodis Sulek has been a general assignment reporter for the Bay Area News Group, based in San Jose, her hometown, since the late 1990s. She has covered everything from plane crashes to presidential campaigns, murder trials to immigration debates. Her specialty is narrative storytelling.